Talk:Comparisons of media players

WP:DABCONCEPT violation

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This article is a fairly clear violation of WP:DABCONCEPT, a disambiguation policy which requires pages that address broad concepts that are not genuinely ambiguous to one another to be converted into broad concept articles. The topic of this article, "comparison of media players", merely covers various kinds of "comparisons" of "media players". The common aspects of engaging in comparisons for products having a functionality that places them within the category of media player is susceptible to discussion in a single article. Furthermore, most of the titles on this page are at best partial title matches to the page title, and if the page were to remain a disambiguation page, those titles would be removed in accordance with WP:MOSDAB. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:24, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello, BD2412

I respectfully disagree on both accounts (DABCONCEPT and PTM). In my humble opinion, Wikipedia has multiple articles the title of which can safely be "comparison of media players"; they are disambiguated in this page. Their concept is not broad; quite to the contrary, it is very close. The ground for disambiguation is the different meanings of "media player". Its nature is the same line as media player page, another disambiguation page.

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 05:11, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree with BD2412. The page has a single topic -- it is a list of Wikipedia articles that compare media players. All these media players are doing some variation of the same thing; playing recorded media. A title is not "ambiguous" just because it can refer to subtopics of a single, more general topic. (If there were a sports team called "Media" and there were an article comparing the players on that team, that would be an entirely different topic and then we would need a disambiguation page.) This is exactly the situation that WP:DABCONCEPT is intended to address. We certainly don't want to have Wikipedia telling readers that "United Kingdom" is an ambiguous title because it might refer to England, or to Scotland, or to Wales, or to Northern Ireland; or that "Mathematics" is an ambiguous title because it might refer to algebra, or to calculus, or to geometry, etc. And, frankly, media player itself is a borderline case. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:54, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I was almost convinced by your explanations until I saw your examples. And now I am still not convinced. Let's try to apply your examples to this article. "media player" vs. "Audio players" and "video players" can be analogous to your "United Kingdom" vs. each of those five regions case. But what about portable media players? "Comparison of media player software" and "comparison of media player hardware" definitely needs disambiguation. (Of course, I accept that "Comparison of PVR software packages" is way out of line in this list and is more of a "see also" item.)

Still, please try to elaborate. For instance, imagine we had two articles titled "Comparison of free video players" and "comparison of commercial video players". What is your take on a page called "comparison of video players"?

Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 12:30, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

That is analogous to saying that Coca-Cola is ambiguous because not only is there Cherry Coke and Vanilla Coke, but each of these is further subdivisible into, for example, Diet Cherry Coke and Caffeine Free Cherry Coke. Compare this to a legitimate disambiguation page like Mercury or Battery, each of which has meanings so different that they can't be written as a broad concept. One easy way to tell if a term is actually ambiguous, or is merely a broad concept, is to fix all of the incoming links so they point to the correct unambiguous term. If it is not possible to do so because many of those links refer to the collection of concepts linked on the page, then it is not ambiguous, but refers to the collection of concepts itself as a single idea. If you are able to fix all of the links coming into this page from articles so that they point to one correct unambiguous link, then my objection will be countered and I will leave this page as it is. bd2412 T 16:24, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi.

The issue is getting clearer. Skipping the Coca-Cola example, which I honestly cannot comprehend, the situation is a hybrid of what you explained, as follows: In the pages that link to comparison of media players page, I can easily change the incoming links so that they point to Comparison of portable media players or Comparison of PVR software packages where applicable, but it proves very difficult to choose between Comparison of audio player software or Comparison of video player software because most of the times both are applicable candidates.

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 03:35, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps what we need here is a "List of" article. bd2412 T 01:12, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Please make yourself comfortable. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 08:12, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.